The press is a bunch of low lifes, traitors, and a general evil on society

They continually report on things they say we MUST know when those things severely endanger operational security of our troops fighting overseas and leads to increased casualties on our side.

I've seen reports on ongoing operations and where they are taking place.
I've seen reports on troop movements.
I've seen reports on when troops will be coming home and which ones will replace them.
I've seen reports on specific locations of where we will be deploying new technologies and specifically where they are operating from.
The only people who should know this stuff is our military. The American public does not need to know these things and should therefore not be told. The only thing they should want to know is are we winning or not. This can be a simple one line news report. (The answer is no by the way)
The enemy uses all of these things to their advantage.

The other thing the press does is give us tons of information on the private lives of celebrities. Woopity fucking do. I don't want to know about their private life. They don't want you to know about their private life. The press makes people think they want to know about their private life.

In the words of William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the greatest men this country has produced:
"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are."
and
"If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast."

 

sorry, but i take this whole war thing as a joke, 'we' are supposed to be fighting against terrorism but we are only sending our troops to one spot, terrorists are all across the world not just in one spot, besides noone will be able to win against terrorism.

 

Paragon you are wrong. Of course the media should be reporting non stop celebrity news. I mean its not like there is anything else of importance going on in the world. So what if the US is involved in two wars, one of which has been a lost cause from the start, and the other is going badly. Who cares about that when Britney skipped a drug test!!! What's so important about government of Burma crushing peaceful demonstrations by monks when there is another missing white woman.

Further, there isn't enough news to fill 24 hours of programming. I mean, its not like things are going on 24 hours a day all around the world. Also, reporting non celebrity stories takes work and money. Who wants to work to do real journalism when you can just repeat what everyone else in the media has already said.

/snark

 

If you don't like them reporting on the Celebrities' downfalls, etc., then the next time your girlfriend walks in the room and says "OMG Britney lost her babies!" tell her never to read the paper again. Then lock her in the closet.

People do read it. That's the problem.

Also, I think there needs to be a careful balance of responsible reporting. Things like battle plans, troop numbers, battalion numbers, base munitions, etc. need to be kept under wraps. It's just a good policy. Heck, I don't think video reports should be allowed at all. Just written ones. And even those should be censored for valuable information. It's just an unnecessary risk.

There's supposed to be an understanding between journalists and the military, but the journalists break it all the time "in the name of social knowledge." There should be punishments for breaking this "code." Namely, jail time, if you ask me.

Of course, if you have no independant reporting from the field, the military can just tell you whatever it feels like. We'd be winning everything "solidly, with mass enemy casualties."

Healthy balance in all things.

 

a la vietnam war?

 

i agree paragon. the press is fucked up and makes things worse than they are. they give out info that people dont need to know. and they make huge deals about things to make them as much of a problem as possible just for more viewers. and to what lurkers_lurk said. the war aint a joke!!!!!!! sure there are terrorists all over the world but we gotta deal with the ones causing us the most trouble. and before i hear the usual, oh they wont do anything anymore so we can pull out and be safe. you gotta understand, and everyone doesnt because of the media, that there damn religion is all about killing us. and they think they get the best spot in heaven if they sacrifice themselves by killing us!!! it doesnt matter if its a school full of children! they will run in with a bomb strapped to themselves and blow it all to hell! you think they will stop??? thats why this war is important and thats why we need to focus on those terrorists. thats why bush is a good ass president and the only reason america is against him is ( can you guess???) the media! i seem to be going of topic but i feel for the war very strongly so dont call it a joke. and for the last thing you said. we aint trying to win. were just trying to keep them at bay until there own country can do it. its either that or we forget its happining until they got half the world on there side and an ass laod of nukes. when people who want to die killing us have warheads. there gonna destroy the whole damn earth.

 

i know that they wont stop, hell it wont matter what we do over there if we dont keep the all defences up over here, oh and im all for the blowing up the earth thing, in fact we have a defenceive system that can locate a nuke thats about to hit us in 15 minutes, calculate where it came from and send a nuke to that spot in 15 minutes.

 

we have defence up over here but it aint needed here right now. if we dont stop them in there tracks then all they will do is get bigger until we cant stop them. you can think all you want but its reality and i for one dont wonna be blown up by a bitch with a bomb strapped to his chest and i dont america to be dominated by pussys in rags because we dont think there a threat or think they cant be stopped.

 

hehe, i think this argument is pointless, i have my opinions and you have your own opinions, not like you are gonna be able to change my thought nor i yours. lets just leave it at that.

 

ok sounds good .

 

I agree with all what you said, except my quote. Let me disagree.

Hell. No.

Either tell it all, or don't tell it at all. Censorship is a friggin' horrible thing.

 

Recon, I agree with nearly everything you said in there, except when you say that their religion is all about killing us, it kinda sounds like youre saying Islam as a whole is about that. I get what you're saying, but that could be misinterpreted. It could result in an unnecessary boxing match. It's more THEIR interpretation than what it ACTUALLY is. I'm more or less a Buddhist, but I do also have many ideals that are strongly Muslim as well.

Anyway, back on topic. Another thing I really hate about the media is how one-sided and unchanging its opinion is. One example, Petraeus' (or however its spelt) report. Ok, I'm neither strongly pro-bush nor strongly anti- bush, I tend to find that most anti-bush people don't know sh*t about what they're talking about and that pro-bush people tend to be extremely closed-minded, but you remember how leading up to his report, the press was always saying stuff how "we'll make our choice when Petraeus gives his report yadayadayada," and how they tried to make themselves sound un-biased, yet when he gave his report, they literally did nothing to change their opinions, but just kept saying stuff that he was so-called "dead wrong" and that whole "General Betray Us" crap? That really really annoyed me, because you knew from the start that they weren't gonna change anything, they were just saying what the public opinion wanted to hear. Stuff like that annoys the hell out of me, the dude's a General for a reason no matter which party's running things, what he thinks DOES have some bearing to it.

Again, I'm neither strongly anti-bush nor strongly pro-bush, I have my own beliefs in the war and how our government should be run and I'm not going to base my opinions on what the public believes.

Sorry also if what I said above didn't make sense, I tried Tongue

I disagree with that Praetor Fenix. Some things should not be told to the public. I certainly would not have let the press know about the atom bomb when it was being developed.

Lets face it, the mass majority of people are dumb, they don't know tactics or how warfare is done and can really cause problems.

I strongly agree that some things should not be told to the public because most of them really don't know how to handle certain information and can really mess things up.

 

No, see, that's not censorship, that's being smart.

PS: Sorry about screwing up your post (Quotes)....I hit edit instead of Quote and didn't realize till I hit the go button....Again, way sorry man.
:-[ :-[ :-[

 

i agree with the part about war reports

i dont agree with the war against the islam, some good friends of mine are muslim

 

Maybe they tell those things but never actually happened, for tactical purposes of course.

 

@ Fenix , I didn't mean censorship by the military or the government, but rather by the press agencies themselves.

They should know not to include troop numbers, movements, commanders' names, etc....

Why would you unnecessarily put information like that out to be read?

 

Ah, yeah, I see what you mean. In my opinion though, the government shouldn't even be releasing that info. If the media can get it, the "bad guys" can.

 

Well a lot of the problem is that the information isn't being released by the military. It's being discovered and reported by embedded reporters or journalists in the area.

They take information without authorization and publish it even though they have agreements with the Military to not release information of this type that could jeopardize troops. They do it anyway sometimes because of the "peoples' right to know." That type of argument is retarded and dangerous. We don't need to know the size of the battalion, the code name for the operation, or in what direction we'll be attacking next.

That's just giving free info to the enemy. If you ask me it should be considered a treasonable offense. Distributing illicit information, that is.

 

See, but then you get into a tricky situation.

Is it "right" for the government to withhold information that a reporter found out on his/her own? Granted, it is sensitive info. But then you'll have people (Like me) arguing that it's against the Freedom of Speech, which is actually not free in the least. I think the simplest (In terms of approval, not in actual execution) is for the military to hold their secrets better.

 

Anyone remember the term Yellow Journalism? It's been rampant since the advent of the newspaper and still remains the number one fact bending and biased option for journalists to date. I agree with paragon and his outline. He pointed out every crucial detail being released by the media and as one of many supporting facts, does anyone here recall the leaked footage of soldiers getting sniped in market squares by CNN? Which side is CNN on any way? It is treason I say.

Does anyone recall anything positive about the war? I sure as hell do not. Everything the media says about the war is the total amount of marines, soldiers, and other servicemen we have lost, how they died, blah, blah, blah. All negative pieces of text! If there is something positive about the war, it is normally relinquished to two to three sentences which are dwarfed by the sheer number of paragraphs of negative reports. It all sounds like propaganda to me and it is surely not working in our favor or for it, in any case.

Here is a question to all of you. How many TV shows have you watched showcasing America's military might and it's development of future weapons? It is weird and uncanny how the freedom of press has allowed untrained and inexperienced people to so closely work with secret weapons of war. It seems that the media is just a giant propaganda coup for terrorists.

The media is America's biggest traitor, yet it is also it's closest friend.